Automated support for clan formation and stat-tracking, one of the promised new features in Microsoft's ongoing Xbox Live 3.0 upgrade, will be a standard feature in Halo 2, Bungie Software announced today.

Normally this would be one of those things that one would simply assume, but Bungie chose to publish the following statement in response to reports alleging that the game's clan features would be a premium extra:

"A website has recently reported, then retracted a story claiming that Microsoft would charge for Halo 2 clan support. Not only was the story nonsense, but the subsequent retraction and admission of falsehood was beneath contempt, blaming, in effect, reader gullibility for its own deception.

"We don't normally address rumors one way or the other, but this one was so ill-conceived and mean spirited that we felt it necessary to cut it off at the pass. Halo 2 clan content will be a normal aspect of the Xbox Live service, and will incur no extra costs for the user. Sigh."

With that taken care of, we'll endeavor to deliver more useful reports on Halo 2 in the coming months.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in 1UP.